NickMiddleton

I would, but I don't have it. I'm kind of young for a BRP guy...

Sailing on the Seas of Fate, a Ships and Sailing supplement for Elric! / Stormbringer 5th edition is available direct from Chaosium's web site at present for $5, and is even more BRP compatible than MRQ Pirates.

Cheers,

Nick

Volley Fire looks like we (as in the play testers) didn't catch marrying the Elric! volley fire spot rule (written for archaic missile weapons - thrown weapons, bows etc) with applying it in a multi-genre context where it might be applied to self-loading weapons capable of fully automatic fire...

As I said here, I'd house rule Volley Fire so it only applies to pre-firearm missile weapons, and only against large targets (such as groups of combatants etc).

Cheers,

Nick

I thought this at first, but then I thought about the blacksmith making an excellent sword for his lord.

He would spend a lot of time on it (+5%) and use his best iron (+5%) maybe even his best tools (+5%). Hopefully, he'd get at least a special roll out of it, but let's say the lord wants as keen an edge as possible (+3 damage), it seems far more reasonable to make an extended roll than to say, "Sorry, you keep that sword handy and have to try for a critical again."

To be honest, I think this is purely a matter of the descriptive words, not the process. The master sword smith crafting a fine weapon for his lord will takes weeks or months at the task. He will haggle with merchants for several different batches of raw ore, prepare several samples of raw steel to work with and select the most promising, forge several basic blades from that and selected the best to take forward to the next process and son on.

Think of that first roll as "getting the basics right": selecting the right raw materials, drawing up the right basic design and so on. Subsequent rolls are refinements on top of those. Depending on the specific act of craftsmanship they might be happening after the object is actually created; or they might be happening as part and parcel of the act of creation.

Overall, I think these rules are a really good way of giving people who want to play craftsmen a little something to do during downtime. It means they can make that longsword with +3 damage for their party's fighting man (or woman).

Flat adds to damage in BRP are very powerful - my instinct would be to make it work like Sorcerer's Razor: it adds to the damage rolled for the weapon but can't take the damage ABOVE the weapon's maximum damage.

Cheers,

Nick

...Any Suggestions? Would this work?

In general I like it.

I'd try and distinguish between aesthetic / presentational / non-game mechanic qaulities and things that have a direct game mechanical advantage. I also would probably look at restricting this ability based on skill level, so that Professionals, Experts and Master Craftsman can do these sorts of enhacements and are worth hiring, and novices can miraculously happen to produce works of genius (or at least, not easily...).

I'd probably want to tinker with some of the details (I'd be teampted to use halving, rather than a flat 25% penalty for example) but looks good. I've got a set of rules for extended projects in BRP somewhere (loosely inspired by the system in Bushido and opriginally intended for use in Elric! and Hawkmoon games) I ought to PDF and put up here...

Cheers,

Nick

I've registered on this forum only to say that Outpost 19 is a great sci-fi setting and scenario. :thumb:

Thank you (and everyone else who's said nice things about it!)

We will see an expansion of the setting soon?

Not soon, at least not a substantial one. I have various ideas and possibilities, but nothing close to publication ready and fond as I am of the Gate Warden Universe my active groups are more interested in other settings at present.

I fully intend to develop some more material for publication in SOME form - I really want to write up some of the ideas I have for the Tripoint Facility. WE will have to see how things go over the Christmas break...

Cheers,

Nick

No smaller than 2, but ideal minimum is 3 - there needs to be a couple of players for interactiosn between them to be rewarding. No bigger than 6, and ideally not more than 5, as it becoames increasingly hard for either the GM to giove enough time to each player, and for each player to get as involved as they'd like.

I've seen peopel run extended games with A lot more players than that - but funilly enough, the actual number of players in the room engaged withthe GM and game never got above 6...

Cheers,

Nick

Spent the evening off line recovering from a hectic week, so only just picked up the good news via an email from Dustin myself.

PDF Download does seem to be working, and I must say I think John Dalton has done a great job with the layout. I am distinctly conscious that my skills as a cartographer are clearly lacking, and that the maps aren't at their best in the final version. I'll see what I can do about making a handout pack for Dustin to put up.

There will be a print edition at some point, but not until next year and I assume after Ashes to Ashes and Berlin '61 have had print editions.

Outpost 19 was originally 'written' for play testing the BRP manuscript in early '06. I say 'written' because my original approach was, as with most of my scenarios for my own use, to scribble ideas long hand in various note books and type them in documents at work and at home until I end up with an amorphous mass of notes about a setting and some stuff that's probably happening in it, which I then use as the basis for what actually hapens, but usually with a lot of improvised detail. I was a bit more disciplined than that with Outpost 19 but not hugely. I built on some ideas from Future*World, blended in some modern SF ideas and some quite old ones (distant memories of Tunnel in the Sky, and various TV SF shows from my childhood in the late seventies were clearly influential to me) as I wanted something easy for my regular group to pick up but which would also let us test BRP in an ongoing game (we were in addition doing some other one shots and stuff).

When Dustin asked about scenarios for a BRP anthology in the BRP play test group I offered him three pieces (i.e. I thought there were three folders I could refine it scenarios fit for publication...) and he liked Outpost 19 so I started work on that. Real life had it's usual disruptive say, not only with Outpost 19 but BRP itself, and (although Dustin never chased me) I effectively stalled on it early in '07... Then, with the hullabaloo approaching Christmas that year around BRP 0 (and a comment of Jason's in a thread here IIRC) reminded me about it so I dug it out and realised I'd got further than I thought with it. I finished the major remaining work over Christmas and then kept fiddling round the edges for a couple of months and finally sent it to Dustin in April.

If people have questions about the setting or adventure I'm happy to answer them here.

Cheers,

Nick

THE GOD MACHINE

The God Machine is a dark fantasy setting in which men and women live in a heavily industrialised medieval world, where steam-powered machines, gas-lit streets, and sorcery and science live side by side. Pollution, belched out by these wondrous machines, has destroyed the natural world, leaving it dead, barren: a dystopia, a world where men cling onto a bleak existence by the tips of their fingers.

Deep in the city of Fanghast, once the jewel in the crown of the mighty Assaldaar empire, religious fanatics of a cult known as the The God Machine build new machines to repair the damaged world. The real terror is, that unwittingly, the very machines they build do more harm, and day by day, the world dies a little more.

The God Machine is a new campaign setting for Basic RolePlay, a game of Science and Sorcery set in a world of perilous adventure.

The monograph will feature:

• A new campaign setting for Basic Roleplaying
  
  
• New magic system that can co-exist with those featured in the main rulebook
  
  
• A detailed overview of the city of Fanghast and it's dangerous Undercity
  
  
• Details of the society in general and criminal underworld
  
  
• Information about The God Machine cult and their worship
  
  
• A quick overview of the outside world surrounding the city
  
  
• The infernal machines and wondrous technologies of this medieval Industrialised world
  
  
• An introductory scenario
  

Sounds really cool Nathan - what sort of time frame are you looking at for submission to Chaosium? Is this a solo effort or is there a team involved?

Cheers,

Nick

RMS summarised the issues nicely.

My main problem was when I tried to make RQIII more swashbuckling, Dodge remains resolutely unappealing as an option except against opponents where it's the ONLY option, as against better levels of success it provides poorer protection than an eqivalent Parry skill against similar sized opponents. For some games I wanted to run or play, this really bugged me, for others less so.

As I say, I may yet house rule Attack vs. Parry back to RQIII (bringing back Shield and Weapon AP) and leave Attack vs. Dodge as an opposed skill.

Cheers,

Nick

Obviously, I'd recommend the old RQ-style independent rolls.

(And it seems to me from his posting above that NickM does too (Mr M?)).

er... not quite. It's the system I'm more used to, and the Elric! matrix always bothered me - but the Dodge problem in RQIII bothered me more, and the BRP RAW address that...

I'm porting a Post-Apocalypse setting I ran in 2007 using RQIII to BRP with the aim of running it next spring /summer and I'm seriously considering house ruling combat so Attack vs. Parry (shield or weapon) works as it did in RQIII, but Attack vs. Dodge works as in BRP...

But that may be too fiddly, so it depends on how the players feel.

Cheers,

Nick

The new BRP is not popular in Australia because it's not sold here. No-one can play it unless they can get a copy.

Bear in mind it is available as a completely DRM free PDF from Chaosium as well, so it should be possible to buy a PDF and take it to a print bureau and get them to print and bind a copy. Not sure how that would compare price wise to shipping a physical copy from the US, but it might be worth checking...

I guess I better head to ebay...

Also keep an eye on teh good second hand dealers in the US like Noble Knight - shipping will still be high, but the book itself might be priced more reasonably.

I hope you managed to get copy!

Cheers,

Nick

Does anyone ever handle combat using opposed rolls in BRP rather than using the attack/parry matrix?

No - it would deadlock combat too much. Effectively, the attack / parry matrix is an attempt to tabulate the results of using a special case variant of the opposed skill mechanic for Combat.

What I mean specifically is this following case: Where I have sword 85 and roll a 50, and you have shield 60 and parry with a 42, and we've both had successes. Under the attack matrix normally this would mean I missed, but if we treat it as an opposed roll this would mean I hit.

But, and here's the thing - my Shield parry and Your Sword attack aren't directly opposed operations. After all, under the current matrix result you DO hit - it's just you hit my shield, because I managed to get it in the way...

This would make hits substantially more common I imagine...

On the contrary actually, from my steel weapon re-enactment experience, the current system produces what seems like the right proportion of blows stopped by parries.

What some may want to change is that a parry just flat negates the blow: in RQIII and earlier, the attacker STILL rolled damage and if it exceeded the AP of the parrying object, that damage then carried on to the target... This method also had its flaws / problems, but it arguably makes more sense of the scenario you gave.

Cheers,

Nick

I will pose some rule questions and you folks can help me learn BRP a little bit better.

Let us suppose that Joe the Warrior( no relation to Joe the Plumber) has a shield and a shortsword. Bob the Bandit has a knife in his left hand and a light club in his right. Joe makes an attack and gets a Success. Bob dodges and gets a Fumble. Looking at A/D Matrix, Bob has to roll on Fumble table. There is a Parry Fumble table but none for Dodge.

Should Bob just roll on Parry Fumble?

No, the skill description for Dodge (page 55) specifically mentions the Natural Weapons Attack and Parry Fumble Table, so use that one.

Assuming the answer is yes, let's say he rolls 88. That means Joe's attack is considered Special rather than the original regular Success. Yes or No?

Assuming that this is a Parry fumble we are talking about, then yes, the fumble result "promotes" Joes success to a special.

If yes, then Joe has Special and Bob has Fumble. That part of A/D Matrix says defender rolls on Fumble table. Bob has to roll on Fumble table AGAIN? Is that right?

No. Do not apply the matrix outcomes iteratively - Normal Success Attack vs Fumbled Dodge reads "Attack strikes defender and rolls damage normally. Defender’s armor value subtracted from damage. Defender rolls on the appropriate fumble table." The outcome of that Fumble roll is that the attack is considered a Special for the purpsoes of calculating damage, special effects and so on only.

Cheers,

Nick

Thanks Nick.

Do you think a strongly envisioned pitch for a supers-based monograph could work, or do you feel that monographs will remain largely Cthulhu-centric with a smattering of BRP books?

Oh, I definitely think they'd look at a solid Supers pitch as a monograph - the advantage of the monograph format for Chaosium is that it is relatively low risk. In fact, I'm slightly surprised that of all the stuff we know about that's in the queue at Chaosium there isn't anything that's clearly supers related that we know of.

Cheers,

Nick

You're welcome. BRP doesn't define the mechanism to increase Allegiance, so how do you 'align yourself'?

Err, page 317?

I can't see anything wrong per se with directly tying specific personality trait values to Allegiance, but I'd be wary of being too deterministic - as the discussion in another thread about Allegiance in Elric! showed, people will abuse deterministic rules badly if given the chance; and having watched some people get the wrong end of the stick with respect to traits and passions in Pendragon it can very quickly kill the mood and atmosphere it's supposed to promote.

In a fantasy setting I'm doing at the moment I have different Allegiance's for each God that Priests use to get their powers - and whilst each god has a few notes (per page 317) about what's "right action" and what is not in their service, I've quite deliberately left it somewhat open so the player and I can discuss a priestly characters actions and agree between sessions and increase or decrease their Allegiance accordingly.

Cheers,

Nick

My mistake Nick, apologies to all and especially Jason for misunderstanding this post:

post

No need to apologise - in that post Jason indicates that he had to deal with editorial pressure to remove powers entirely and put them in a separate book, which tallies entirely with what you said. My comment was based on my memory of the play test, in which the form and function of the Powers chapter was the single biggest debate we had - but I don't recall anyone suggesting the core book should be without some form of "Powers".

Hence my confusion earlier in this thread - and I will say that even if Chaosium were considering removing the "Powers" chapter from the core BRP, it would have been so it could be published as a separate volume (per Jason's post you linked to).

The difficulty is that supers isn't a huge segment of the RPG market, and it is pretty well served at present - so I suspect Chaosium will rely on the PDF's of Superworld and its supplements for the moment. Mind - if someone pitched them a project to rework it that was strong enough, I'm sure they'd consider it seriously.

Cheers,

Nick

I may be wrong, but the sense I have is that they (Chaosium) are not too motivated to pursue a fully-fledged supers system, given that Jason Durrall had to fight to retain inclusion of superpowers in the BRP book.

I don't recall Jason having to "...fight to retain inclusion of superpowers..." - there was considerable scepticism about it being the sole power system - but the issue there was "off the shelf playability" more than anything else as I remember it.

I think Chaosium are very small, have very few resources, and have very little evidence that there is sufficient space in the market (already well served by GURPS, HERO and the much lauded Mutants and Masterminds), to name but three...) to warrant the investment in re-working Superworld. If someone could demonstrate otherwise to them, I'm sure they'd look at doing it.

Cheers,

Nick

My thinking, not entirely dissimilar to Islan's, would be simply to rule that if a character attempts to dodge when they do NOT have the space to move at least 1 Mov on flat open and secure ground, all dodges are difficult, but not charge the character actual Mov points / allowance for dodging. The character needs free, clear space around them to dodge at full skill value - in the center of a room, on flat dry ground facing a single opponent in melee striking range. If they are crowded or cramped by objects or people, on uneven, unstable or unsecure footing (a slope, a stair case, a river bed etc) then dodging becomes a step more difficult (and factors might combine to make things even more difficult).

This requires NO book keeping, just the GM keeping on top of (and players paying attention to) the environemnt, and encourages maneuvering opponents in to situations where they CAN'T dodge... But also, it doesn't focuse too narrowly on exactly where characters are - my experience in steel weapon reanactment combats was that even in formation pole arm fighting there was generally more space and movement than one might expect - and that when one LOST that space and ability to move "on the spot", things went badly very quickly.

Mind, if I was minded to run combats in a more tactically detailed / miniatures fashion, I think I would use the "1 Mov to Dodge" idea.

Cheers,

Nick

I don't remember that one. Is that a monograph, or are you referring to "The Bronze Grimoire"?

err,

Magic of the Young Kingdoms for Mongoose's Elric line ...

It's an MRQ supplement? Published by Mongoose...

Nick

That'd be great. Free to print and distribute, right? I hope they're not intending to make people pay for 'em...

My memory of the email exchange with Dustin is that the idea was they would be put up on the website as PDF's and Chaosium would print them and hand them out at conventions, plus possibly send packs of them out via distribution for retailers to hand out etc. I don't recall any suggestion of charging for them.

Cheers,

Nick

...Hopefully you can see that BRP isn't just "I attack you parry" - there's a lot of versatility in the rules. All being well when some BRP fanzines or magazines start to turn up, we can start writing some articles on how these rules can be used.

If you write them now, we can put them in the fanzines...

There's a lot there already without having to houserule.

The thing that still gets me about BRP is that very often when I start thinking about how to reflect some detail properly in the game mechanics, I realsie that I don't need new rules, just to apply exisitng rules to the topic at hand - the extent to which actually BRP just copes is quite remarkable...

Nick

...What tactics can a fighter employ to give themselves an advantage? How can they even the odds, or gain an advantage? what about throwing sand in someone's face or other tricks? How to use the terrain to put an opponent at a disadvantage?

Read the spot rules chapter, and make sure the player's have too. Make sure that the circumsatnces of such fights are well described and clearly thought through - very few fights will actually be formal duels taking place in utterly featureless open spaces with universally even lighting and smooth floors - but all too often that's how RPG fights are treated...

If the environment has depth and features, combatants controlled by players will tend to think of things they can do with that environment and a GM well versed in the BRP core rules should be able to adjudicate accordingly, with the core rules and the spot rules chapter to guide them.

E.g.if on a sandy beech, a player could ask if they can grab a handful of sand (Agility roll perhaps to grab the sand and doing so takes up an action)) and then next round rather than attack with their sword, make a hard throw attack to fling sand in their opponents face; the opponent can only defend with a Dodge - if the PC hits, the target has their vision obscured for at least 1 round (all combat rolls are one step harder) - if they make a Luck roll, they shut their eyes and the effect goes afeter one round, other wise they suffer the penalty until they make the luck roll...

BRP is an old school RPG - it's not a fixed taxonomy of things a character can do, it's a logical framework that tries to provide sufficient guidelines and examples that a GM can take a players description of a reasonable action for their character and furnish reasonable game mechanic parameters for the success or failure of that action.

AikiGhost and Frogspawners suggestions are also good.

Cheers,

Nick

Yes but what with Lynn not working at Chaosium any longer? Who reads submissions nowadays?

I suspect that is one reason why things have been somewhat delayed at Chaosium this last quarter actually.

William Jones was officially announced as "...an Assistant RPG Line Developer, Staff Writer, and a Fiction Line Editor." Dustin Wright handles "Sales & marketing" and his bio at Chaosium makes specific mention of Monograph submissions. They have also been using freelance editors for specific projects, but that's not worked out well, as I believe at least two projects have been or are currently delayed due to editors dropping out and having to be replaced.

I think (hope!) one of the things Chaosium is trying to address at present is the lack of internal editing resources...

Cheers,

Nick

We should have a fan based contest award.

If anyone here is up for judging a contest and setting up guidelines for it. Id be interested in that. Perhaps house the winning PDFs on this site or on lulu?

Why not both? A print acceptable version at Lulu, so those who prefer hard copy can get one if they wish, and a screen use version here.

Sounds like a good idea actually...

Hmm: three judges who have to read all submissions and pick the best three. People could be elected by the user community here, and we could canvas for volunteers to turn the winning three into a Lulu-print compatible PDF...

Could be really cool...

Nick

Think the glitch is in the use of the term levels - Sorcery spells don't really have levelsm so page 122 should say you start with 1/2 INT in spells, andpage 123 is correct that the maximum possible number of spells you can have in mind is equal to your INT. That's certainly how the system worked in Elric! IIRC.

Cheers,

Nick